be careful of the blow back as that wind gets stronger, perhaps a raincoat ?

backwoods
 
 
In the case of Izotope I don't think are top-notch any longer and with dwindling sales have been forced to join the race to the bottom.

I respectfully disagree, and I think you are confusing packaging (and even then drawing the wrong conclusion ie 'race to the bottom') with quality of product. Look at it this way, smart algorithms that work brilliantly in the mastering process as iZotope have been brilliant in delivering, do not go backwards. They work on wav files, which are a constant target.  The user interface has got slicker and more feature laden, the packaging and pricing has improved. Whats not to like for even serious, professional mastering. IMHO, Ozone is capable, in the right hands, of producing as good as result as any in the contemporary scene. For me, being able to own the O6 and now O7 full production bundle at the discounted cost of $202 dollars or around £150 of our English pounds, is the best deal I have ever seen, period. I also trust iZotope to know exactly what they are doing, which as far as I can see, is adapting to the audio software market landscape in a proactive and agile manner.
  

I wouldn't characterize it as a "race to the bottom", although there's no doubt that there has been enormous price competition in this still-small niche market.
 
The cost of entry into the music software business is extremely low: basically you just need a computer and an internet connection. Well, and some rather arcane skills. But the skillset isn't out of reach for anyone already adept at some other category of realtime data processing, such as game programming.
 
Consequently, there is a growing cottage industry of one-man operations working out of their home offices, many in low-cost locales such as Eastern Europe, India and Turkey. Those guys can sell their products for 50 bucks a pop, and $49 of that will be pure profit.
 
Of course, there are many strata of skill levels among any group of software engineers. At the pinnacle of that hierarchy you've got a few lone wolves like Vojtech Meluzin and Aleksey Vaneev, true experts who choose not to be anyone's employee. But you'll find far more bit-flipping superstars anonymously drawing paychecks at traditionally-structured companies such as Waves, FabFilter, Sony and Avid. And make no mistake, a couple of them work at iZotope, too.
 
I found one example of iZotope's competence when I did a survey of harmonic exciters. There are a lot of them, and nearly every one of them suffers from the same problem: aliasing. But not Ozone. You simply cannot make any of Ozone's modules alias. And yet, if you look around Ozone's UI for the oversampling options, you won't find any. While any other dynamics processor requires you to manually guess at an appropriate oversample multiplier, and punish you for forgetting to set it before rendering, Ozone just quietly handles that automatically.
 
I have no reservations about lumping iZotope products with "the good stuff". Happily for us, it's good stuff we can now afford. Are they in financial trouble? It's possible, but I'm inclined to think it's just a matter of realistically adjusting price points in an evolving industry. 

I have both Ozone 5 and Ozone 6 (basic versions).  I still use Ozone 5 and can't find any "factory" programs that suit me in 6.  I doubt that I'll upgrade to V7, based on my uses and Ozone 5 serving me well. 
 
 

I use Ozone 06 (basic) for mastering. I used to use Soundforge 11 which is still handy for batch file conversions etc. But to my ears, the Ozone algorithms are pretty much where the money is. And the program is rock solid. I'll be hard-pushed to change to anything else.

As for the music software business, you're so right Bit. If someone's a gifted software engineer with a musical ear, developing and selling a new plug-in is a great way to make money. Selling software always is, as long as you don't have to shift boxes.

The Kiosk Project

backwoods
 
 
In the case of Izotope I don't think are top-notch any longer and with dwindling sales have been forced to join the race to the bottom.

I respectfully disagree, and I think you are confusing packaging (and even then drawing the wrong conclusion ie 'race to the bottom') with quality of product. Look at it this way, smart algorithms that work brilliantly in the mastering process as iZotope have been brilliant in delivering, do not go backwards. They work on wav files, which are a constant target.  The user interface has got slicker and more feature laden, the packaging and pricing has improved. Whats not to like for even serious, professional mastering. IMHO, Ozone is capable, in the right hands, of producing as good as result as any in the contemporary scene. For me, being able to own the O6 and now O7 full production bundle at the discounted cost of $202 dollars or around £150 of our English pounds, is the best deal I have ever seen, period. I also trust iZotope to know exactly what they are doing, which as far as I can see, is adapting to the audio software market landscape in a proactive and agile manner.
  

Well. To this I would say they are acting in a proactive and agile manner they have never shown before. 1) Everything but Ozone is to be discontinued. 2) Someone will buy them out. 
 
 
 

It could also be a very smart perhaps marketing ploy, easy way to get a good amount of extra customers, say take for example the amount of people who already own Ozone and maybe some of the other Izotope  plugs, get all these people to upgrade with one of the new bundles, what do they do with the extra licenses, most would probably sell them, more people owning Izotope, more people potentially buying more Izotope products, but if everyone was like me and just kept all the extra licenses well . . . Just a thought that popped to mind after noticing a decidedly higher percentage of Izotope products for sale on KVR.

It's an interesting evolution when professional plugin manufacturers decide to open up to a much larger group of home studio musicians and songwriters who want to get into some mixing and mastering of their own.
That's why prices had to come down, substantially, and they did.
I for one gladly welcome this evolution.

Fleer
It's an interesting evolution when professional plugin manufacturers decide to open up to a much larger group of home studio musicians and songwriters who want to get into some mixing and mastering of their own.
That's why prices had to come down, substantially, and they did.
I for one gladly welcome this evolution.

Yes, I would have gladly paid the price for the Bundle deal just for the Ozone 7 Advanced upgrade from Ozone 6 Advanced alone, and I got Trash 2 and expansions to boot, which I am liking very much and finding very useful for some extra swizzle wizzle on stuff.